Give Five - Read Five:  Donate books to your local elementary school
Have you ever heard of the term summer loss? This is not a seasonal diet or exercise program, but a troubling trend in which students lose valuable literacy skills when they stop reading during their break from school.  Low-income children are especially susceptible to this problem because they often go home to an environment where there are very few books or other reading resources. As a result, by the end of fifth grade, these students are approximately 2 ½ years behind their more affluent peers in terms of reading ability, primarily because of summer loss.  For this reason, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has launched the "Give Five – Read Five" campaign. As a part of this effort, we are asking parents, business leaders and members of our communities to donate five new or gently-used books to their local elementary school. Research done at Harvard University by Dr. James Kim shows that even reading four or five books over the summer helps to prevent the summer slump so just imagine what we will accomplish if we make sure every student in grades K-5 leaves school on the last day of the school year with new books in hand.